Hurricane Arthur may have been, pardon us Jamie Dimon, a "tempest in a teapot" fizzling quietly in the Atlantic, but halfway around the world, a far greater storm is currently picking up speed and barreling toward Japan. As Reuters reports, Typhoon Neoguri, described as a "once in decades storm" is set to rake the Okinawa island chain with heavy rain and powerful winds. Typhoon Neoguri was already gusting at more than 250 km an hour (150 mph) and may pick up still more power as it moves northwest, growing into an "extremely intense" storm by Tuesday, the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) said.

The storm was south of Okinawa but moving northwest at 25 kph (16 mph) with sustained winds of 180 kph (110 mph) by 7:00 p.m. (1000 GMT), the JMA said on its web site.

The JMA official urged people in the target areas to evacuate early and take precautions. Television showed fishermen winching their boats out of the water. A forecast of the storm path is shown below:

As Bloomberg added moments ago, the nation’s Meteorological Agency issued an emergency warning
for high waves for most of Okinawa prefecture, including the capital. Storm intensity is forecast to increase to violent from very strong, move toward Japan’s main islands. Gale, storm surge, heavy rain, high wave and thunderstorm warnings ore advisories are in effect for all of Okinawa. Heavy
rain warnings are in effect for portions of Kyushu, Japan’s
southernmost main island, and for southwestern portions of Honshu,
Japan’s main island

The good news: Neoguri is at not expected to be as strong as Typhoon Haiyan, which killed thousands in the Philippines last year. The bad news: the damage and devastation will still be substantial, which for a country where GDP just cratered following the March tax hike and which many believe has already entered recession, is just what the Keynesian doctor ordered.

What is worse (or better depending on one's point of view) is that US military assets are right in the path of the hurricane: the JMA said on Monday evening it also planned to issue an emergency high sea warning for Okinawa island, host to three-quarters of U.S. military facilities in Japan. The commander at Kadena Air Base, one of the largest U.S. military establishments on Okinawa, warned that damaging winds were expected by early Tuesday.

"I can't stress enough how dangerous this typhoon may be when it hits Okinawa," Brigadier General James Hecker wrote on the base's Facebook page on Sunday. "This is not just another typhoon."

"In these regions, there is a chance of the kinds of storms, high seas, storm surges and heavy rains that you've never experienced before," a JMA official told a news conference. "This is an extraordinary situation, where a grave danger is approaching."

Clearly, Japan needs some training in panic-prevention. It certainly will come in handy when the failure of Abenomics finally "trickles down" through to the Nikkei.

The silver lining is that there is no (well, this is Japan, so make that little) chance of a Fukushima repeat: there are no nuclear plants on Okinawa, but there are two on Kyushu, Japan's westernmost main island that lies in the area through which the typhoon is likely to pass, and one on Shikoku island, which borders Kyushu and could also be affected.

All are halted in line with current national policy. A spokeswoman at Kyushu Electric Power Co said there were no specific plans related to this typhoon but the company had plans in place year-round to protect the plants from severe weather.

As for the wealth creation addicts: the Nikkei 225 will keep trading no matter what.

All are halted in line with current national policy. A spokeswoman at Kyushu Electric Power Co said there were no specific plans related to this typhoon but the company had plans in place year-round to protect the plants from severe weather.

All He has to do is scribble and dial and whhhoooshh! -dem rodz all be buried in the dig in Nevada, shipped off to the Bikinia Atoll, or used in place of rebar in the vast new prisons to be built in Iraq after the impudent elements of ISIS are rounded up and in Texas after absolutely everyone associated with the term 'Tea Party' is found guilty of tax evasion....

Ok, seriously: this isn't a problem with that CongrASShole Harry Reid; He didn't commit to doing nothing and putting off action all by himself -for the last 50 fucking years.

CongrASS & the Fuck-Ups-In-Chief are to blame: ALL of them going back to at latest, Kennedy.

Keep a weather eye out for this one eventually looping around the North Pacific even as an extratropical low pressure riding along the jet stream. These things have a way of eventually heading over the Pacific Northwest of the U.S.

Plus...carrying with it whatever it picked up from......ahem....you know where . we so fuk i shima.

"On July 2, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) announced that it would not reopen the investigation into the destruction of TWA 800. This was the Boeing 747 that was blown out of the sky ten miles south of the Long Island coast on July 17, 1996, killing all 230 people on board.

The TWA 800 Project, a team of former aviation investigators and scientists, had petitioned the NTSB to examine evidence that pointed toward a missile strike on the airline. Not surprisingly, the NTSB, which had invested four years of resources to prove some other theory, any other theory, chose to stick to its original findings that flammable fuel/air vapors somehow caused the explosion."

Ahhh. I rememeber a typhoon hitting Okinawa many years ago. I was at Camp Schwab, and the package store sold out of alcohol many days before. I recall watching a bored Infantryman tie each corner of his poncho to each of his extremities and try to mimick a flying squirrel off the barracks roof when the typhoon winds reached their peak. Good times.

Japan must have really angered God somehow. It's not only the natural disasters, but the bad leadership (Abe) which is the chief sign that God is wroth and angry.

The good news is, with God you know that after the measure of chastisement is full, He may show mercy. To this end, I agree with JHK that Japan will likely be the first modern nation to take itsef off the grid.

Henry Gruver made it sound like God stuck a fork in that potato back in 2011. said the innocent lost in the tsunomi was the Lords Harvest.

then again, reading into some tea leaves i probably shouldn't.. i might end up in Japan some measure of years after fleeing the states and moving to Russia. right now i'm imagining if learning russian is hard, learning japanese after that is going to be hell.

If calamities like these would hit Europe, I think the continent would be in complete - and I really mean complete - disarray. Luckily, the Japanese are a tougher breed. At the very least, a lot more displined.

Let me rephrase my initial post: I was talking about Western Europe, not the Eurasian continent. How many people in Western Europe are really, truly concerned by what is happening in Ukraine, you think? It simply is business as usual over here.

As long as no shot is fired west of Ukraine, we don't really care. We should know better though, as history has proven time and again.

Former Ambassador Murata has long begged for international help indicated workers may have to abandon the plant and this could begin the contamination of our world as Fukushima has ten times the radioactive particle contained at Chernobyl.

Further Update: 33 Inches of Rain from Typhoon Wipha; New Storm Brewing

See above article comments, it has plunged Japanaese vs Chinese relations to a new depth.

Comments

"The more war mongers like Shinzo Abe prays to devils and war criminals at the Ysaukuni War Shrine, the more disasters for Japan because of divine retribution. So bring it on Shinzo Abe!

Neoguri an apt name for a divine wind or kamikaze that will blow away the evil in Japan. More divine winds and divine earthquakes and divine tsunamis headed for Japan until all the evil is destroyed.

If only Kublai wasn't held back by the kamikaze...

Being barbarous and praying to war criminals and devils at he Yasukuni War Shrine will certainly bring about God's wrath on the wicked, barbarous, dishonourable, war-mongering people of Japan. Fukushima was a warning.

Yeah, let this Super Typhoon rip through Japan as a sign and message that all the recent things that Abe is doing is only going to bring a stronger force of Karma back to the Japanese people.
The force of Karma does absolute wonders on people like Abe and the Japanese."

Thankfully this thing is ramming onto shore from the South. By the time the storm arrives it Fukushima at least the winds will be moderate. That's the upside. No doubt massive amounts of radioactive water is now going to be flushed into the ocean. This is so very sad. The Government of Japan and Tepco should be held criminally accountable in a World Court for failing to make the clean-up an international matter of the highest priority. Instead they sweep it under the rug so much so that we have no real idea what's going on. Perhaps because they don't either.

Only a matter of time before a super-typhoon makes a direct hit or another huge earthquake strikes. Then the hundreds of large tanks storing all that highly radioactive waste water will be smashed. It's so frightening to have this open sore on the planet but the media's attention span is close to zero so the population has "moved on" from this story.

Ahhhh... I remember the Typhoon parties on Okinawa back in the late 80s when I was stationed at Camp Hansen. Cases of beer, ramen noodles, pizza... MRE's that no one touched. Usually the power stayed on and we watched movies for a couple of days. Memories... Best of lck to all in the path. Semper Fi

Help me out on this -- how did Hoover Dam move due to flooding on the Mississippi? I'm too dense to see that connection.

Isn't there a difference between an "earthen dam" and an "earth filled" dam? Plus, I thought Hoover Dam was all concrete. Guess I have a little research to do.

One thing is for sure -- the Feds were extremely paranoid of a terrorist action against the dam. So much so that they spent hundreds of millions building a massive highway bypass to steer trucks and general traffic away from it. During the years of construction, trucks were no longer permitted to drive the highway across the dam.

There are 6 dams on the Missouri River from Montana to Kansas City, MO. These dams were originally built for the purposes of flood control. The problem with these dams is that the upper dams are very poorly built and are already holding record water levels with record snow pack about ready to melt and overwhelm them. What is supposed to happen is that lake levels are supposed to be low in winter ready to receive spring runoff. If the Fork Peck Dam fails, the resulting wall of water would destroy all other 5 dams like a row of falling dominoes. If all 6 dams on the Missouri River fail, the resulting flood would destroy cities, and nuclear power plants all along the river including Kansas City and St. Louis. A dam failure and the resulting flood would be the worst disaster in US History.

This is just Mother Nature self-adjusting after a warmer than usual winter. She has been doing this pretty well for a couple of billion years. And if you live in China, hope some of this moves on-shore, so that you can remove your respirator and get to see the building on the other side of the street.

I Wonder if a large enough storm could mask over the initial signature of a nuclear bomb if the bomb went off precisely at the center of a 80+ mile per hour wind zone.

would it be possible for people to just mistake the effects of the bomb for the storm , especially if you had the television talking nonsense and anyone willing to come forward with their account of seeing the bomb blast being either ostracised ignored killed-----or being told that what they saw was a natural gas explosion

it wasn't a nuke---it was a factory explosion with natural gas or something

seriously---like just 1 or 2 kiloton nuke right dead center in the storm. of course radiation would spread everyhwehre but you can claim that that was just fukushima dust that had already settlied on the ground.

so wait, lemme get this straight -- a 3mm hole leak -- about the diameter of a necklace - is the cause of opening up the 9-day (or less? what if the heating up is log-normal so it gets hotter and hotter the hotter it gets... like a compound effect? Like the rest of it becomes "pre heated" so it takes less energy to heat?) - window of meltdown.

Alex, I'll take sports metaphors for $500. "A type of feint in which a player moves his or her head to fake a change in direction." What is a 'head fake'? "Correct, for $500."

I'mma... I'mma let you finish, but lemme say this: There is no fucking way a 3mm hole leaking is going to be anything other than a head-fake for something else happening...

I also cannot believe that the reactors are all off. I cannot believe that somewhere, some place, some powerful entity, an army base, a wealthy person, an elite prefecture... has not quietly allowed their nuclear plant to be fired up so they don't have to change their standard of living, possibly for defense purposes... but it's the kind of thing you read after the fact, as some facts unfold sooner than later...